ISTANBUL, TURKEY.- Elgiz Museum of Contemporary Art, Istanbul presents the exhibition “Poetics of Space: Öztoprak and His Generation’ to honour the eightieth birthday of Abdurrahman Öztoprak, one of the Turkey’s leading contemporary artists of international stature. The exhibition will be held between 12th of December, 2007 and 15th of March, 2008.

The exhibition, ‘Poetics of Space: Öztoprak and His Generation’, curated by Necmi Sönmez, will focus on one aspect: Abstract artistic dialogue between Turkish and European artists. The aim of the exhibition proposal is to present first time in Istanbul some important abstract paintings after 1945 from the collection of European Museums together a selection of works by Abdurrahman Öztoprak. Both accessible and compelling, this confrontation of abstract works from Europe and Turkey transcends cultural and geographic distance.

There will also be a concert taking place on 13th of December which will meet the art work of Abdurrahman Öztoprak and Beethoven’s music to dedicate the artist. In the following days after the opening of the exhibition, there will be a panel at the museum, where the museum directors of the loaning institutions will be attending.

Abdurrahman Öztoprak (*1927 Istanbul, lives in Akyaka) is one of Turkey’s leading contemporary artist of international stature. His works are represented in the permanent collections of major museums and private collections in Turkey. He draws his inspirations for his abstract compositions primarily from Classical European Music. He created a unique body of abstract works during a fifty year period. On July 1st 2007 Abdurrahman Öztoprak has been eighty years old. Öztoprak was educated at the Art Academies in Istanbul and Rome and worked in Germany between 1960 and 1975.
Öztoprak’s abstract paintings are a true archive artistic dialogue between East and West cultures and testimony to the way in which different traditions express their feelings. Their messages are continually universal. The geometrical abstract works of artist demonstrates a unique imaginative form vocabulary. Öztoprak’s paintings have recorded interesting dialogue between Oriental and Occidental Art; through them we witness a fertile symbiosis of Turkish and European Culture.